Abstract

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s fiction vividly portrays the struggles and negotiations of Indian-American women navigating the complex terrain of diaspora. This paper explores how her female protagonists embody the tensions between assimilation, resistance, and cultural memory in a globalized world. Drawing upon novels such as The Mistress of Spices (1997), Sister of My Heart (1999), and The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (2001), the study examines the ways in which Divakaruni reimagines migration as a multidimensional experience—one shaped by nostalgia, cultural hybridity, and feminist agency. Through a postcolonial feminist lens, the paper analyzes how her characters resist erasure by preserving inherited traditions while simultaneously adapting to the cultural codes of the host nation. The study situates Divakaruni’s work within the recent theoretical discourse of transnational feminism and diasporic subjectivity, arguing that her narratives transcend the binaries of East and West, homeland and hostland. The protagonists’ struggles to redefine identity illuminate the evolving contours of South Asian diaspora in twenty-first-century America. By emphasizing cultural memory as both burden and resource, Divakaruni re-centers immigrant women as agents of transformation rather than victims of displacement. Ultimately, her fiction underscores that belonging in diaspora is not about complete assimilation or rigid resistance but about crafting fluid, hybrid selves that reconcile the past with the present.